We Aren’t Just Weekend Warriors
My husband and I meet in high school. Life goes on. We graduate. He goes into the Marine Corps. Then to the Georgia Guard. Then the Ohio Guard. Wherever life took him, his love for the military followed right along with him.
As for me, I fumbled around. Took way too many years to find myself.
Eighteen years after graduation, life brings us back together once again. About a year after we started dating, we went on a New Year’s trip to New Orleans with my sister and her husband (who’s been in the Army National Guard for many years). The boys talked military and beer all the way to, from, and during the trip. My sister and I joked we could have stolen their credit cards and gone on a shopping spree, and they would never have known it. By the time we headed back, my sister overheard the infamous “you should sign back up” conversation.
“You know what that means? Right?”
“Yes! Of course, I know”
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
“Yeah! I got this! I’ll be fine.”
“You realize your methodical way of planning things is going to change. Putting everything on the calendar is going to change.”
“Yes! Laura, I know! It’s okay. I can handle this.”
If you’ve read this far, I’ll give you a minute to pick yourself up off the floor and catch your breath, because I can hear you laughing.
Being a Weekend Warrior doesn’t mean we’re any less than the full-timers. There’s still a house to run. Doctors’ appointments. School projects. Ball games. Band concerts. Dance recitals. Sick kids and broken down cars. Some of us still have jobs to go to on a daily basis.
It isn’t any easier for us just because it’s only once a month. Drill schedules change (we’re currently on version six for this year). For those of us with blended families, we have to plan birthday parties and family gatherings around visitations and drill schedules. For my family we have one weekend a month that all five of us are home. The “D” word seems to get thrown around more for the Guard than the regular Army. Trainings across country and across the seas. Schooling that can last for weeks or months at a time.
It’s exhausting, nerve wracking, and will drive your anxiety through the roof.
But it’s also fulfilling.
The pride you get seeing your service member in uniform almost explodes your heart.
The tears in your eyes when that promotion finally comes through.
After all the long weeks and months of schooling and classes and nights sleeping alone in an empty bed, you cry not because you’re sad, but because you know it was worth every sleepless night.
Every night that a kid puked and you had to clean it up by yourself, it was worth it because your service member made it!
So you aren’t “just” a Weekend Warrior’s spouse. You’re strong. You’re chaotically organized. You’re the spouse of a service member…
And you’ve got this.
Looking for more National Guard connection? Check out all those blogs here.
